A Few Green Leaves Page 6

  ‘The mausoleum?’ And the governess keeping it in order?

  ‘Yes, by the church, you must have seen it, where some of the family are buried.’

  ‘Oh, I must go there some time,’ said Magdalen in a social way. Miss Lee seemed to be overcome by her memories and she tried to guide the conversation on to the days after the war when things weren’t much better even though the fighting was over. ‘Do you remember the meat ration going down to eightpence and that ewe mutton or whatever it was called?’

  ‘Miss Vereker had a way with ewe mutton,’ said Miss Lee, still on her memories. ‘She was an imaginative cook.

  ‘I see you’ve been initiating Mrs Raven into our little group,’ said Tom, coming up to them.

  ‘Yes, we’ve been talking about the past,’ said Miss Lee, ‘something we all remember.’ But her tone was slightly defiant and Tom knew that by ‘the past’ she did not mean quite what he did. Still, it was a beginning.

  He looked around him to say something to Miss Howick – Emma, as he was beginning to think of her –but she had gone. He prepared to spend an evening with his sister, who had not been at the party, and to tell her ‘all about it’.

  9

  One morning Tom went into the church, as he often did, to spend half an hour or so, not exactly to meditate or pray but to wander in a random fashion round the aisles, letting his thoughts dwell on various people in the village. This was in its way a kind of prayer, like bringing them into the church which so few of them actually visited, or never darkened its doors, as a more dramatic phrase had it. He studied the monuments and wall tablets, noticing repairs that were needed, brass that was tarnished (whose turn had it been last week?), and sometimes regretting Victorian additions to what had originally been a simple building.

  The family at the manor had the largest and most interesting memorials, with florid inscriptions that taxed the memory of one’s Latin. It was perhaps a pity that we no longer commemorated our dead in such terms, Tom felt, remembering the barer records of the twentieth century. Now a memorial more often took the form of an extension to the communion rails – a godsend indeed to old stiff knees – or a very plain tablet in chillingly good taste. We were more embarrassed nowadays or less insincere, he would not have liked to say which, for ‘sincerity’ was disproportionately valued today. It would be impossible, for example, to imagine anything like the de Tankerville mausoleum being erected now. It had been put up outside the church in the early nineteenth century and later members of the family had been buried in it. Now, when they no longer lived at the manor, it seemed an awkward anachronism in such a small and humble parish.

  Tom was thinking along these lines when he heard a movement at the back of the church. Somebody had come in, though whether visitor, parishioner or brass-cleaning lady he was unable to see. The ‘person’ – and in these days of sex equality and uniform dress and hairstyle the visitor could surely be so described – had moved into the de Tankerville chapel, as it was called, and appeared to be examining the monument of the recumbent crusader. As he came nearer, Tom saw that it was a young man with golden bobbed hair, dressed in the usual T-shirt and jeans and wearing pink rubber gloves, an unusual and slightly disturbing note.

  Can I help you? Tom thought, without in fact uttering the words, for it seemed at once too trivial and too profound an enquiry. An offer to ‘help’ might “be taken literally when all that Tom felt himself capable of offering on this occasion was a brief history of the church and village with perhaps more detailed comments on some of the monuments, and he was about to start on his usual account when the young man forestalled him by speaking first.

  ‘You must be the rector,’ he said, rather too effusively, almost as if he were congratulating Tom on having got the job. ‘I’m Terry Skate – I’ve come to see your mausoleum. I thought I’d just nip into the church first, to put me in the picture – if you see what I mean – get to know the general set-up, what was involved and all that.’

  The two of them were standing looking down at the effigy of Sir Hubert de Tankerville. Tom felt that it might almost have been his fault, as if Mr Skate might blame him in some way, that the head of one of the little dogs reposing at the crusader’s feet was broken off. Contemplating the headless animal, he thought of the Puritans and the Civil War, but again the visitor got in first with a comment about vandalism, ‘even in olden times’.

  ‘You haven’t been here before?’ Tom said, trying to remember the others who had come periodically to ‘see to’ the mausoleum, mostly grey elderly men, certainly nobody like Terry Skate.

  ‘No, it’s my first visit, the first of many, I hope. My friend and I have taken over this florist’s, you see – of course we have lots of regular orders for floral displays, not to mention weddings and funerals, you name it, we do it – but we’ve never done a mausoleum before.’

  ‘What exactly are you going to do?’

  ‘Oh, just tidy it up – it’s more a job for a garden centre, really – supply new plants and bulbs for the outside, daffs at Easter and that kind of thing. Being a church person myself I got the job, my friend being agnostic.’

  ‘I see. Then you are….’ Tom had been going to say ‘one of us’ until he realised the possible ambiguity of the phrase. Besides, it was most unlikely that Terry Skate’s churchgoing would have anything in common with the simple village service which was all that Tom’s parishioners would tolerate.

  ‘Goodness, yes! Choirboy, server, M.C. even – you name it…. You’d have to be a believer, wouldn’t you, to do a mausoleum?’

  Tom saw that this must be so and proceeded to give a brief history of the mausoleum – how it had been put up in 1810 to commemorate a de Tankerville killed in the Peninsular War, and how later members of the family had been buried there and monuments erected to them.

  ‘Could we have a peep inside?’ Terry asked enthusiastically. ‘I’m just longing to see.’

  They went out of the church, unlocked the gate of the mausoleum and folded back the grille leading to the interior. A heavy red velvet curtain had to be drawn aside to reveal the box-like tombs and monuments. Although it was a warm day outside, the icy white of the marble and the cold blind faces of the classical sculptures struck very chill, and Tom shivered. He did not often go into the mausoleum and was unable to match Terry’s enthusiastic comments, disliking the whole concept and finding the marble representations pretentious and unsympathetic.

  Terry agreed that it was cold inside. ‘You’d think you could put a storage heater or even a paraffin stove in here,’ he suggested.

  ‘Oh, I don’t think that would be suitable,’ said Tom. ‘Anyway, nobody really goes inside now – nobody spends much time here,’ he added, aware that he was saying something slightly comic. ‘There’s nobody left of the family to take any interest.’ This was sad, of course, though more from the historical than the human point of view. There were documents lost for ever to the local historian. If only he could have been here in the thirties when the de Tankervilles left the manor!

  ‘Has the family died out?’ Terry asked.

  Tom explained its history, the last surviving male killed in the Great War with no dependants, the sisters selling the house not long after that, the present owner a man who took no interest in the village…. The chill of the mausoleum was beginning to get into his bones. Should he ask Terry Skate back to the rectory for a cup of coffee?

  They went outside and into the little garden surrounding the edifice where there were some gravestones with spaces for vases of flowers or pot plants.

  ‘I suppose it was done at Whit and somebody’s taken away the dead flowers.’

  ‘Yes, one of the flower ladies usually does that.’

  ‘Which is more than she did in the church, if I may make so bold,’ said Terry with a laugh.

  ‘Yes, something does seem to have been neglected there,’ Tom agreed. ‘And of course mid-week is a bad time for flowers.’

  ‘Dead flowers left in the water ma
ke such a stink.’

  ‘Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds,’ Tom suggested.

  ‘These weren’t lilies – larkspurs, I should think. I might get some pelargoniums for the graves here,’ Terry went on. ‘A splash of colour – that’s what’s needed.’

  ‘I’m sure that will be admirable,’ Tom said.

  ‘I’ve got some plants in the van. Meanwhile, is there a café or teashop in the village?’

  Tom was dismayed, for of course there was nothing of the kind and it was too early for the pub. It would have to be the rectory after all. He apologised for the lack and extended his invitation.

  ‘Oh, that is kind – I was hoping you’d say that. I almost prayed there wouldn’t be a café in the village and that I’d have a chance to see inside your beautiful old rectory.’

  ‘There’s not much to see,’ said Tom, again apologetic, ‘though of course it is an old house.’

  ‘Monks lived there, perhaps?’ Terry suggested.

  ‘Well, no – I don’t think there is any evidence of that….’

  ‘But it’s what I’d like to think. There’s a definitely monastic feeling here,’ said Terry, glancing critically round the hall and taking in its shabbiness.

  The hall was sparsely furnished, certainly, but the appearance of Daphne and Mrs Dyer struck an unmonastic note.

  ‘What about some coffee?’ Tom asked.

  ‘We’ve had ours,’ said Mrs Dyer firmly. ‘We’re turning out the dining-room today.’

  ‘What about a glass of sherry then?’ Tom turned to Terry, who was taking in the scene. ‘Or is it too early for you?’

  ‘Oh, I’ll make some coffee,’ said Daphne, coming forward, but it was too late – sherry had been offered and there was no going back.

  Tom introduced Terry Skate to his sister and explained about the mausoleum.

  ‘Oh, how splendid – to have somebody who really cares about it, especially now, with the flower festival.’ Daphne was enthusiastic.

  ‘Flower festival – in your church? You don’t say!’

  Tom wondered if Terry was being impertinent but decided that he was a guileless young man expressing himself in his natural way.

  ‘You’ll have to get rid of those dead flowers,’ Terry joked.

  ‘Yes – whose turn was it last week?’ Tom asked, trying to introduce a sterner note.

  ‘Was it the third Sunday?’ Daphne mused. ‘Yes it was, wasn’t it. It was Mrs Broome’s turn.’

  ‘But….’ Tom protested.

  ‘Yes – she’s in hospital – had a heart attack last week.’ Daphne let out a peal of unexpected laughter. ‘So no wonder the flowers look a bit off colour!’

  ‘I see – but I didn’t think Mrs Broome ever came to church.’

  ‘No, but she’s always done the flowers on the third Sunday – ever since we’ve been here.’

  Tom let this pass without comment – obviously he had failed somewhere.

  ‘Your church would lend itself to something special in the way of flower arrangements,’ said Terry hopefully.

  ‘Oh, it will be just flowers from people’s gardens,’ said Tom quickly, fearing that Terry might expect to get an order for expensive florist’s blooms. ‘This time of year there ought to be plenty.’

  ‘I must pop over,’ Terry said, ‘when you have it. You could get a lovely effect on that crusader – pity about the dog’s head being broken off, though, but you might conceal it with a posy.’ He stood up. ‘Thanks for the sherry, rector. I must say, I like a sweet sherry in the morning.’

  Tom said nothing. It had been a medium dry but not, of course, Spanish, and the bottle seemed sadly depleted since the last time he had drunk from it. Did Daphne sometimes indulge, to compensate for not having a dog? He found himself wondering if his morning had been wasted but was prepared to believe that it might not have been. God did still move in a mysterious way, even in this day and age or at this ‘moment in time’, as some of his parishioners might have said.

  10

  ‘COFFEE MORNING AND BRING-AND-BUY SALE AT YEW TREE COTTAGE. TUESDAY. 10.30. ADMISSION 15p.’

  Meditating on the note which had been pushed through her letter-box, Emma wondered whether a serious sociological study had ever been made of this important feature of village life. Miss Lee and Miss Grundy were holding a coffee morning at their cottage (and there was a yew tree at the side of the house). And the clergyman in the photograph on the piano, wearing an exceptionally high clerical collar, was” Canon Grundy, Miss Grundy’s father, sometime Anglican chaplain on the Riviera. This much Emma gathered when she entered the sitting-room, but from then on there was such a confusion of impressions that afterwards she found herself making notes under headings, almost as if she were indeed preparing a paper for a learned society.

  In aid of what? was her first note. This was not specified on the invitation and nobody mentioned any particular cause, it being assumed that everybody already knew. It might have been something in aid of Old People (Elderly or Aged, however you liked to put it), or children, or the Cats’ Protection League (unlikely), or a political party (Conservative or Liberal, not Labour), Shelter or Oxfam, or just the vague all-embracing ‘Church Funds’. (Or just not in aid of anything?)

  Entrance. The 15p. entrance fee (placed in a handmade pottery bowl on a small table in the doorway) included a cup of coffee and a biscuit, and a piece of homemade cake could be bought for 10p. Miss Lee and Miss Grundy served the coffee, assisted by a number of willing ladies (rather too many), mostly grey-haired and elderly. (Far more than might have been thought necessary for the serving of a cup of rather weak coffee.)

  Participants, e.g. others present not engaged in coffee-making. (a) Men. None, (b) Women. Daphne Dagnall; Avice Shrubsole and her mother Magdalen Raven; old Miss Lickerish (didn’t seem quite to fit into the social hierarchy – so was the coffee morning perhaps in aid of some animal charity?); Tamsin Barraclough (didn’t quite fit either, so perhaps she was also making a social survey?!); Christabel G. (made brief visit, more in nature of royal personage bestowing a favour). Various other women, unidentified, possibly from neighbouring villages.

  Bring and Buy. Everybody brought something, mostly jam, pickle, cake, biscuits or scones, all homemade. Impossible to discover who exactly had contributed what (expect that Miss Lickerish was seen to deposit a tin of baked beans on the table). The bringing and buying, consisting as it did of people bringing what they had made and buying what somebody else had made, achieved a kind of village exchange system, some coming off better than others. No doubt there was plenty of criticism of others’ efforts, even if not openly expressed – who, for example, was the bringer of the not-quite-right marmalade which had been boiled past the setting point and gone syrupy? Whoever it was could have saved face by buying it back herself and in the general bustle this ruse might not be spotted. Christabel G.’s contribution was a cut above the ordinary plum and rhubarb jams – a pot of quince jam (labelled ‘Quince Preserve’). Emma quickly bought this, having contributed only half a dozen scones herself – a bargain.

  The raffle. Apparently this was an essential feature of a bring-and-buy sale (‘We always have one’). Various objects were displayed on top of the piano round the photograph of Canon Grundy. These objects (or ‘prizes’) were: a large iced cake; a flowered toilet hold-all in shades of mauve and pink; a small tray decorated with an engraving of Lake Como (or Maggiore); a set of pottery mugs; a tea-towel patterned with Scottie dogs. Tickets (3 for 10p.) had been sold in advance.

  All was ready for the draw, there was even an expectant hush in the room, for this was a kind of climax to the morning, when Adam Prince made a sudden and dramatic appearance bearing a bottle of wine.

  Emma had been thinking that no man would dare to attend the sale but then she realised that, of course, there could be exceptions. A former Anglican priest might well have the sort of courage required for the occasion and Adam, so very much at ease with ladies, obviously came into this catego
ry.

  ‘Just something for the raffle,’ he murmured. ‘I do hope I’m not too late and that you’ll find this not too unacceptable.’

  He was gone before he could be thanked, leaving Miss

  Lee grasping, embracing almost, the very dark-looking bottle of wine.

  ‘Oh dear,’ was her first reaction.

  ‘Red wine,’ said Miss Grundy. ‘But how kind of him,’ she added.

  ‘Fancy him coming in his car,’ Daphne said. ‘You’d have thought he could have walked those few steps from his front door.’

  ‘I suppose we must put this in for the raffle,’ said Miss Lee, hovering uncertainly with the bottle still clasped to her bosom.

  ‘Of course,’ said Avice, moving some of the other objects on the piano aside to make room for the bottle. ‘And I think we ought to get going with the draw,’ she added bossily. ‘Some of us haven’t got all morning to spend in chat.’

  Emma felt humbled, as if the reproach might have been directed at her own conversational efforts. Spending all the morning in chat could well apply to the anthropologist who gathered so much of his material in this way.

  ‘Yes, we must,’ said Miss Lee. ‘We’ll take it in turns to draw and the winning ticket has first choice of the prizes.’

  Daphne’s ticket was the first to be drawn and she chose the iced cake; then came Avice’s mother, who chose the tray. Other prize-winners followed, each choosing something until, rather to Emma’s surprise, only the bottle of wine was left. The fortunate person with the last ticket was unknown to her – a thin, nervous-looking middle-aged woman in a pale blue Courtelle dress, who seemed to shrink away from the bottle, so dark and menacing, which was to be her prize.

  ‘Lucky you,’ said Emma feelingly.

  ‘Oh, I don’t drink, really,’ murmured the woman, ‘though I’ve no objection to other people….’

  ‘Why don’t we give Mrs Furse another prize,’ said Avice, ‘and put the bottle in again?’ She looked round the room in search of something that might make an acceptable substitute, her glance even seeming to light on the photograph of Canon Grundy in his high collar. ‘Perhaps, Miss Lee…?’